Tornado Alley (PROG)

[newmedman]

I'm sure I've told this story before but I went to our community college between 89-91 and it's still an excellent place for kids like me who had the will to attend school but couldn't afford the university life. I graduated from high school top 10 in my class and had excellent SAT's (32) at the time. I was accepted to a bunch of good schools but on paper it just wouldn't have worked for me even with meager scholarship money.

My family unit was collapsing at the time, so I was on my own. Our community college was very affordable because of the discount I got for living in the district. The most expensive thing for me was the books but I stole most of them. LOL my physics, chemistry and calculus books cost more than the courses themselves so I took matters into my own hands.

The idea was to get enough credits to later transfer to a 4 year program but my wild youth and work schedule sucked that dream up within the first year. The great thing about attending the CC was that there were a ton of vocational programs and tech was one of their good opportunities. I took a bunch of drafting courses when CAD was in its infancy and I loved them so I wound up walking out of there with my certificate... The only problem was that entry level jobs paid peanuts so I still had to work nights to make ends meet and I also hated the office environment..

When I landed my first construction job, I was hooked for life. It paid triple of what it did to sit on my ass all day to render drawings on a computer and unlike most young kids, I could read and understand blueprints so I had a leg up and moved up rather quickly.

Our CC offers a lot of great accredited classes along with a nursing school, law enforcement classes, teaching degrees and a whole range of tech jobs these days. LOL It costs us a butt load of property taxes though I think it's totally worth it for kids who were just like me to be able to find themselves at a reasonable cost if you live within our district.. Our local public schools are no slouches either.

Then, even if you decide to punt and do something completely different like I did, you're not saddled with massive student loan debt for the rest of your life.